Franz Boas

Franz Boas (9 July 1858-21 December 1942) was a German-American anthropologist who was called "the Father of American Anthropology".

Biography
Franz Uri Boas was born in Minden, Westphalia, Germany in 1858 to a family of assimilated and liberal German Jews. He graduated from the University of Kiel in 1881 with a degree in physics, and he took part in a geographical expedition to northern Canada, where he became fascinated by the Baffin Island Inuit tribe. He went on to do field work with the indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, and, in 1887, he emigrated to the United States and became a museum curator at the Smithsonian. In 1899, he became a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, where he remained for the rest of his career. He pioneered the new field of anthropology and created the concept of cultural relativism, and he also became an outspoken opponent of scientific racism. He died in New York City in 1942 at the age of 84.